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Keyboard apps for Android that have additional features are pretty much standard these days. They offer direct access to GIFs, stickers, Google search result from the Internet, and so much more. A keyboard of this kind is Fleksy, which comes bundled with their proprietary Fleksyapps or add-ons per se. The newest major beta release of the app, version 9.8.0, delivers a set of four new add-ons as well as integration with their in-house developed smart assistant. Let's check out the release notes and continue afterward with our usual insight portion.

What’s new

Welcome Fleksy 9.8: our biggest update so far this year!

• NEW: We have further optimized memory consumption.
• We have added 4 new Fleksyapps: Vlipsy, Skyscanner, Emogi and Gifnote (US only).

As good English skills are essential for app testers, there are certainly multiple ways to overcome this language barrier and be able to write great software test reports. For example, there are websites as well as applications for translation and grammar correcting that you can rely on if you have some basic knowledge about English and how to use it.

Here are our top 4 picks for Android apps that will help you write high-quality application test reports with ease.

Google Translate

Translate by Google is undoubtedly one of the best, if not the best translation app. It uses Artificial Intelligence and many other Machine Learning-based technologies to provide you the best and most accurate translations overall.

• Google Translate on the Play Store

Microsoft Translator

A solid alternative to our number one spot comes from Microsoft. Translator is pretty simple to use and works offline too.

• Microsoft Translator Beta
• Microsoft Translator on the Play Store

Yandex.Translate & @YTranslateBot for Telegram

Yandex.Translate is just as good as our other recommendations. It works with no Internet connection and can be used inside Telegram via the @YTranslateBot, which is fantastic!

• Yandex.Translate on the Play Store

Grammarly Keyboard

Knowing and using the right words is important, but just as important is the order you write them in. Grammarly can help you accomplish this somewhat difficult task with its extraordinary spell checking and outta world grammar correcting features.

Last month Telegram announced a new design contest for developers from around the world. Their purpose has been to spice up the interest of some clever minds and give them a platform to showcase their fresh design and coding ideas, with the added benefit of giving them prizes and hiring them later down the line. The latter is perhaps, mostly applicable for winners who are good enough to pass all stages of the contest and prove themselves to be worthy, though job opportunities by other companies may come up too.

March Contest

So, the March contest's winners for Android were announced over the past week. The original goal was to develop a fast and easy to use software for displaying charts in either JavaScript, Android Java or iOS Swift, with a sample data originally provided by Telegram. Included were sections for profile/channel/group activities and based on this information, there is a great chance that we will see such a feature implemented into the official clients of the messaging service shortly.

The winner of the March Android Contest is @thankyou2 who has received $50,000 as a gift. Looks like his app has been the only one to comply 100% with the published design guidelines and has been the best performer in terms of reliability and speed even on older Android devices. His sample APK, including apps from other winners, were all posted on the Telegram Contests channel, which you can test if you wish.

Note that Stage 2 of the contest is running at the moment and submissions will end on April 15.

Snapchat has been undergoing plenty of changes, starting from a revamp to the Android app to introducing shows last year. This week there have been many new announcements from their side, with lots of interesting stuff that you should keep an eye out for.

Snap Games

To play with your friends, other than messaging and the regular 'snapping', they have added a new set of six basic games: Bitmoji Party, Tiny Royale, Snake Squad, C.A.T.S. Drift Race, Zombie Rescue Squad, and Alphabear Hustle. While playing those, you can still communicate with your friends via text or voice calls. Snap Games have begun rolling out and should be available for all users very soon.

Snap Originals

Snap Originals were introduced in 2018, and because of their popularity among Snapchatters, ten new shows are coming in shortly. Snapchat has partnered up with the likes of BuzzFeed and other movie production companies to offer you the greatest and most personal stories ever, exclusively crafted to be consumed on mobile devices. Stay tuned!

AR Lenses

If you ever wanted to breathe life into landmarks, Snap's Landmarkers are here for you.

A new beta update for the fancy Smart Launcher 5 is now available on Google Play for all registered testers. This release, version 5.2 build 031 to be precise, appears to add in a dark theme option which comes together with a small number of nice customizations. Please, take a look at the release notes and stay tuned for our detailed feature walkthrough afterward.

What’s new

• Added "AMOLED Black", an option to make the dark mode even darker.
• You can now select 4 different options to automatically enable the Dark mode Always on / Follow system settings / During night time / On dark wallpapers
• Many other improvements related to dark mode.

Dark mode

Dark mode has been the one feature that everyone is working on supporting due to Google's recent admission that it brings pretty huge battery life gains, finally! Smart Launcher 5 has also jumped on that same bandwagon, but with an even better version of dark mode in tow - AMOLED black mode. As you can guess from the title of this report, you can choose between two variants of how the background colors to be set throughout the app. To enable it and do further personalizations, go into the settings of the app - Global appearance - Dark mode. There are a couple of selections about when it should go on, like according to your system settings, during the night, etc.

I am certainly glad that there are more and more app developers who are striking to support dark mode in their apps.